


graceland

by hotknife666 (hotdammneron)



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: DILFs, Domesticity, Established Relationship, M/M, Retirement, incredibly low-conflict, the concept of germany, the mortifying ordeal of being a philadelphia flyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:34:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23800636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotdammneron/pseuds/hotknife666
Summary: You can see the same sky every day, your whole life, and never get sick of watching the clouds and constellations scattered across it. Some things stay beautiful no matter how much you get to look at them. A love that’s worn-in, comfortable like a sweater that’s been through the wash a few too many times.
Relationships: Danny Briere/Claude Giroux
Comments: 17
Kudos: 86
Collections: Flyers Fic Exchange





	graceland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dannybsdadbod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dannybsdadbod/gifts).

I want to stay on the back porch while the world tilts toward sleep, until what I love misses me, and calls me in. (Dorianne Laux, from “On the Back Porch,” Only As the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems )

I have loved since you. but when the new paint gets scratched, there you are underneath. (a softer world, #1073)

I want to try and be terrific. Even for an hour. // Your shoes are piled up with mine, and the heat comes on, makes a simple noise, a dog-yawn. People have done this before, but not us. (Ada Limón, from “During the Impossible Age of Everyone”, Bright Dead Things: Poems)

\- - -

Claude’s last season doesn’t end with a bang, no fanfare or dramatics or cup-finals-game-8 exit. They’re in the playoffs until they’re not. Claude’s in the league until he’s not. 

There’s not really a way this kind of thing’s supposed to go, when the season ends alongside a career; there’s no set in stone last game, there’s a sendoff video on a flash drive in somebody’s office and nobody really knows when to plug it in. 

So, it goes like this: they lose it in the fifth game in Columbus, and it’s scrappy, it’s TK trying to bite anything that moves, snapping sticks in half, like there isn’t all this newfound responsibility on the line. It’s all helmet taps for Hartsy and handshakes and shuffling back into the visitors’ room, a text from Danny, good game, good game. 

He pulls the jersey over his head, folds it up neatly, prays that nobody needs any rousing speeches. There’s always next year for everyone else, a shiny second or twentieth chance.

\- - -

They agreed on the place relatively early in the conversations, a few minutes out from Glen Rock. Somewhere comfortable, somewhere that feels almost like home. Danny kept saying it didn’t matter, he’d be happy anywhere if they were back together. Sometimes it feels like they’ve been away from home so long that it sort of - carries with them. Wherever, together, anywhere but Montreal or Danny will refuse to leave the house as long as there’s daylight and would-be-fans out. 

Anywhere has unspoken rules associated with it, somewhere out of the spotlight, somewhere to feel held. Danny used to talk about anonymity when they were on the phone, way back in 2013, with the Philly hotel room hookups because going back to Claude’s condo felt too consequential, with the miss you and the call when you have a chance. There was no way for Danny to be nobody, in Montreal; like the number on his back was still stitched on when he pulled the jersey off. Colorado came and went without much consequence, retirement from there. The feeling sticks around regardless.

Claude’s only had a chance to stop by the house once or twice since they signed for it, but it feels safe, it feels like home. No white picket fence bullshit, but there’s a space for a little garden plot, soft sheets, Danny and the dogs. Room enough to be comfortable. 

\- - -

Danny meets him at the airport without having to text first, because they’re good like that, the two of them. There’s no grand display at the airport terminal, he’s waiting in the parking lot, leaned up against the side of the car. He looks good, like he always does, like he always has, scowling down at his phone like snippy reply tweets are worth all that energy he puts into them. 

“You played well,” he says as Claude walks closer, slips his phone in his pocket. There’s a world where he meets him halfway, takes those three Hollywood love story steps forward, tugs at Claude’s lapels and meets him with a kiss. Like this is a movie, something glamorous, like they aren’t in a Philly airport parking lot on a Tuesday night. Danny stays where he is, lets Claude meet him there. Presses his palms down the thin fabric front of his jacket, like he can smooth everything out that easily. 

“We lost,” Claude says, reaches up to take one of Danny’s hands in his own. He’s always loved Danny’s hands, for all that he loves all of Danny, call him a lovesick fool. “But I guess I’ll take it.”

“I mean over the years,” Danny says with the slightest eye roll, rubs his thumb along the ridges of Claude’s knuckles. “You had a good career. All things considered.” 

Claude feels himself settle, presses his head to Danny’s shoulder, the weight of another season past making his shoulders come in on themselves. Sometimes it feels so heavy that it seems to overbalance and flip inside itself, make his stomach feel all hollow and caved in, like somebody took a melon baller to every fiber of his being. There’s something about twenty plus years of near success balanced with abject failure that takes its toll. 

“Take me home?” Claude asks, feels his lips brush so slightly against the fabric of Danny’s sweatshirt. 

Of course, Danny obliges.

\- - -

The heatwave comes down a few weeks after the season’s end, and they stay it out inside for the most part, lounging inches apart on the couch with the dogs banished to their beds, too hot to really be touching in comfort. For an older house, the air conditioning works well enough for the afternoons, evenings and late nights cool enough. 

They don’t quite feel like a housewarming party, too much of an ordeal for a half-unspoken new turn of life. It’s a smaller thing, a few of the guys from the team coming over for a responsible number of beers, not enough chairs out on the porch so they have to sit on the stairs, out on the grass in the yard. Nobody’s quite young and dumb enough to make a night of it, but it’s nice. 

“Don’t open this while I’m here,” Pats says when Claude walks into the kitchen, all stiff and nervous like he’s being held at gunpoint. He’s holding a laughably poorly-wrapped package out to Danny at arms length, barely tasteful and suspiciously Christmas-themed ribbon only just holding on to the paper. 

“We weren’t expecting gifts,” Danny says with this little half-smile pulling at his face, and Claude would say he was too fond if that wasn’t the perfect amount. 

“I know,” Pats mumbles, getting more defensive by the second. Teeks is calling him from the back porch, keeps insisting the dog misses him when everyone knows the dog isn’t the one who’s clingy here, bless those two morons. 

“You can leave it on the counter, there,” Claude says just to let him off the hook, stop Danny from continuing this apparent strange and cruel form of antisocial torture.

“If you open it while I’m within a ten mile radius of your house I’m going to fake my own death and join the witness protection program,” Nolan says, his voice getting incrementally more mumbly with every word, putting the package on the counter with remarkable care. “It’s not weird. I’ve, uh - I’ve gotta go.” 

He doesn’t leave completely, just escapes out to the yard, back to the overbearing and all consuming attention of TK and their ratty little dog. 

\- - - 

(There’s this very underground, very hip-seeming brewery between the house and the city, and Danny knows the owners, knows everybody in his own strange way of socializing, makes it a date night. 

The uber driver home doesn’t recognize either of them or plain doesn’t care, gets a hefty tip and five stars for her lack of comment. Paul Simon hums faintly over the radio, graceland, graceland, so this is what she means.

“Did the driver have the radio on oldies because she thinks we’re old?” Danny half-whispers as Claude closes the car door.

“You’re the only old one,” Claude says, ducks in to press a kiss to Danny’s temple, starting up the gravel path before Danny has a chance to give him shit. The song’s still stuck in his head when he’s trying to get to sleep.)

\- - -

They drive into the city for the home opener, because they want to, or it’s an obligation, or some combination of the two. There’s a ceremony before puck drop, calling Claude out on that tacky black faux-velvet carpet, hair rushedly slicked back on the way out of the house, mumbles about being presentable. It’s something about gratitude, about the years he’s spent with the team and his leadership, it’s coach’s voice over the stadium speakers asking TK to join them at center ice. Embroidered letters and media smiles and blinked-back tears into shoulders. 

Christ alive, Claude’s proud of the kid. He’s gonna be good. Always has been.

\- - - 

There’s a transitionary period, an adjustment, because of course there is. 

A month into it they get in a fight, if you can even call it that, about Danny’s bizarre propensity for wearing socks to bed and inevitably taking them off in the night. And - it’s not a fight, per se, but there’s a little tilt to Danny’s frown that makes Claude feel too young for any of this, ages them both by years haphazardly back to the old house, back to the weird old days. 

Claude sleeps on the couch for two nights. If it’s hell on his back then maybe it hurts for a reason, take that as a lesson.

The thing that’s hard to comprehend is - there’s no rules to this, no instruction guide on something that’s been built over so many years. Everything’s different from when Claude was nineteen, even if nothing’s different, whichever angle you look at it from. It’s been building up to something new. 

However many years ago now, the last time they shared a space, shared a life - it feels like centuries, like tectonic plates have come together and shifted apart and caused great rifts and reconnections in the years since Claude was making lunch for the kids. Driving with Danny to and from the rink for convenience’s sake and fixating, late nights thinking about his hands on the steering wheel when he didn’t trust Claude to drive. The way the light hit the polished band of his watch, the inside of his wrist - it didn’t feel silly to think about, back then. 

It feels like seven lifetimes over have passed since Germany, for christ’s sake. 

They know how to talk through it, this time around, but maybe they’ve always known - to maintain a semblance of togetherness, all this time, something was communicated somewhere. There were fights, and there were resolutions, and there was continuity, even when the time it took to get a call to connect felt like years, the two of them were there, together.

All this to say; you don’t know where the creakier floorboards are in the new house until you get accustomed, and it’s easy to avoid the squeak once you find it. 

\- - -

(The first time the boys all make it out to the house is at Christmas, and they descend like biblical locusts, putting dibs on basement guest rooms and eating all the food out of the fridge like they aren’t whole entire adults who should have better manners. 

Cameron bugs Claude about still not knowing how to cook, barely around for fifteen minutes before he gets around to the chirping. Danny glares at him, he glares back. 

There are two framed Christmas cards on the mantel, one from 2011 and one from now. Made sure the frames match, keep the two of them side by side for some kind of comparison. Caelan insists that his photo editing skills have improved, however slightly, even if it’s all apps now. Just another thing that’s changed, stayed the same, all at once.)

\- - -

When Claude gets home from running errands, the screen door is cracked open, a few inches for the dogs to come and go as they please. 

It’s a sight - not for sore eyes necessarily, but a sight for eyes that could never get too accustomed to what they get to see. Danny doesn’t seem to notice him coming home, sat in one of the porch chairs with the dogs curled up at his feet, the glasses he’s had to get used to reflecting the clouds in the sky, streaked with gold and pink as the sun sets. 

You can see the same sky every day, your whole life, and never get sick of watching the clouds and constellations scattered across it. Some things stay beautiful no matter how much you get to look at them. A love that’s worn-in, comfortable like a sweater that’s been through the wash a few too many times.

The dogs perk up when Claude slides the door open enough to step out, careful around the cord from the old record player Wayne sent for Danny’s last birthday - pulled out onto the porch with the volume low, it took a whole target trip just to get a new extension cord that fit the old plug type - but Danny keeps reading, faint smile the only sign he’s noticed at all. Claude knows him better than to think otherwise, to think this quiet acknowledgement isn’t enough. 

When they moved into the house, it was pre-furnished, to a degree. Nobody expects two NHL-retirees to have the highest standard for interior decor; there were already paintings on the living room walls, however ugly they may have been, two borderline comfortable wood chairs on the back porch, however far apart. They haven’t bothered getting new ones, only bothered pulling them closer together, still too far apart. 

Claude sits on the floor of the deck, instead. 

“How was the store?” Danny asks, and it’s the kind of question that could be so rhetorical, but he asks it like he means it, because he does. He closes his book slightly, keeps his thumb tucked in between the pages, holding his spot, always good at holding onto things.

“They had a sale on the tangerines you like,” Claude says, rests his head against Danny’s leg even if the arm of the chair is against the back of his head. Presses a kiss to his knee, through the layers of the blanket Pats gave them. 

Danny makes this little pleased sound, all in the back of his throat, Joni sings softly about those different sets of circumstance, burning farmhouse from the grainy record player speakers. 

“You can stay, I suppose,” he says, reaching a hand down to brush through Claude’s hair, tuck it behind his ear where it’s gotten long. 

He’s stayed long enough, despite everything, despite ex-wives and trade deadlines and late night arguments on the phone from four time zones apart. There’s something to be said for choosing comfort, contact, proximity over predestination. Sticking together.

The sun still sets in the west, in spite of it all, with Danny reading whatever book about the USSR or French Revolution he’s moved on to this week, the two of them together, speaking in all these hushed tones as the orange streaks in the sky keep fading into dusk.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i hope u liked this! it was not nearly as long as i intended it to be, because finals are kicking my ass, but hopefully what it lacks in word count it makes up for in tenderness. i also, relatedly, have completely forgotten how to write dialogue. 
> 
> Important plot note: its my personal decision to think that somewhere in his attempts to deal with [hand wave at life situations], nolan patrick begrudgingly takes up crochet work from tutorials by old ladies on youtube, and makes a granny square blanket for his two gay dads as an unofficial housewarming gift. It is absolutely garish, they love it, and they’ll hand wash it until it falls apart at the poorly sewn together seams. 
> 
> songs mentioned are graceland by paul simon + coyote by joni mitchell. i have a playlist for this that i will post once things are revealed (and, tangentially, a pinterest board). 
> 
> once again, hope u liked it, :^)
> 
> EDIT: hello! my twitter is @hotknife666, and the playlist is here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/04AS5T4PYP0L9Sz9I9d4mE?si=oiuRMaDwQyOqQJR6FnCf2Q. i love everyone in this bar.


End file.
